on the road again - california here i come!!!

early this a.m., tessie drove me the 55 miles from her home to pick up my truck. ray met us at the garage, attempted to show me the cracks in the 4 pistons he had replaced, cranked up the truck, and $2600 later, i was outta there w/my big baby. ray recommended i get the belts changed at another shop. he called ahead, told me who to ask for, & arranged for the work to happen.
when i got to this shop, the young man that was going to change the belts didn't have time to do it so i had to approach the service department. the older white man behind the desk took a look at my truck & with horror dripping from his face to his words, he querried "imprison bush?"
we had a 28 minute discussion (tessie was waiting for me....) while he vacillated between southern friendliness and edged toward indignant rage. we were able to talk it thru & he promised to fix my truck regardless of my political leanings. at the end of our conversation, which he did not want to end, he did mention something about maybe i could enlighten him a little...
the most interesting point of view that came out of him was that he thought our choices were either go to war or to nothing. he also talked about wouldn't i kill if someone was attacking my child. i needed to talk about when are we ever in that kind of position - we here in the u.s. and why can't we create a society & a world in which the need to protect our children from attack does not exist. and maybe we have societies now that thrive on war but what if we created societies that did not include war as an option. i needed to look as deeply into his eyes as possible and ask him if he would like the opportunity to live in such a society where NO ONE will take the life of another human being, or is he content to live in this kind of society that does condone the killing of humans.
he also talked about giving iraqi's the right to vote - as if he was a proud dad & the vote was his new born. i needed to ask him, again peering deeply, which would he chose, a job w/a decent income enabling him to survive AND support his family - or would he rather be able to cast a vote to elect the president? which would he chose?
and speaking of choice, he took the opportunity to demand if i was pro-abortion. i got to tell him my standard 'no one is pro-abortion in the whole country, don.' he looked a little surprised. i told him i was pro-choice. he said 'oh, so you would have an abortion if you wanted to.' i said 'oh, so you would think you should be able to tell me whether i should have an abortion or not, i you want to?' he wanted that right. i told him & did he want to make his opinion about my decision a law that i had to obey?
he didn't get to bring up gay marriage, but i think he wanted to - tessie had called me twice on my cell so i ducked out after thanking him for being willing to talk & to fix my truck without damaging it. i shared w/him some of the previous damage that anti-democratic folks had done to my truck, knowing i was leaving it in good hands w/don! he gave me his word he would have it fixed properly - which he did!
we didn't get to pull outta atlanta until around 3:00p.m. fortunately, we gained an hour so we made it outta georgia, into birmingham, and then north thru mississippi and on to memphis, cross the mighty mississippi river and into arkansas before retiring for the nite.
overwhemingly the response was positive to the truck, especially thru atlanta (of course) and birmingham. there were 2 fuck you's in mississippi altho at each gas station stop, at least 2 people came up to me & thanked me for the messages on the truck.
i'm not going to get biodiesel in arkansas this time - i'm having enuff truck trouble without taking the risk of running biodiesel in the cold weather, and cold it is! can't wait to get home! peace,sam